"In Walked Horace" - Horace Silver - His Life and Music

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Put directly, I find the music of Horace Silver irresistible. When I listen to it, I feel happy, joyous and free. I was reminded of this fact when I re-read portions of Horace’s autobiography while doing a deep dive into examining the elements of the Jazz style that has come to be referred to as "Hard Bop."


Not surprisingly, perusing the book also resulted in the parallel activity of getting out his many Blue Note recordings and listening to them again, but it also raised the question in my mind of what was it about his music that I found so appealing?

As noted, Horace’s music is usually associated with the Hard Bop style and, according to a number of noted writers on the subject, Horace is one of the originators. of “Hard Bop.” Some maintain that he is THE originator of Hard Bop.

So are the ingredients that constitute Hard Bop the reason why I like Horace’s music so much? If this could be the basis for my preference, what are these ingredients; what is Hard Bop?

For the author, Richard Cook, in Blue Note Records: The Biography [London: Secker & Warburg, 2001], the evolution of Horace’s music into what has come to be known as Hard Bop may not only have resulted in a new Jazz genre, it may have also saved Blue Note records itself from extinction.

To paraphrase Mr. Cook, after ten years of following a similar methodology, by the mid-1950s, the bebop scene had begun to atrophy – its ad hoc nature grew to seem like a very curse.

Although there were some more or less regular formations, the faces in the musical community were familiar but not working together in ways which let ensemble identities gel. As Art Blakey would later remember: ‘Guys then would throw together a band for one night and play standard bebop tunes, just stand there and jam. And people got tired of that. Everybody was just copying.’ [p. 72].

As a result, Blue Note was in such a perilous financial state that it was even entertaining offers to buy the label when, with apologies to J.J. Johnson – “In Walked Horace” [J.J. wrote this tune which is a play on words with Monk's In Walked Bud.]

Horace came to the label’s rescue through the record date on November 13, 1954 for which Horace created “… the blueprint for perhaps the greatest small group in post-war jazz.” [Cook, p. 72. Just to be clear, I think that what Mr. Cook is referring to as “greatest” are the many versions of the quintet that Horace has led over the years and not just this particular group]

For this date, Silver employed Hank Mobley [ts], and Doug Watkins [b], who were working with him at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, and added Kenny Dorham [tp] and Blakey [d].

In many ways, this was to become the seminal album that resulted in the birth of the Blue Note “Sound,” the start of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers and start of the many versions of the Horace Silver Quintet [HSQ].

The music on this album seemed to transition be-bop into an earthier, more blues-gospel orbit that connected with audiences and forged the direction that this particular school of bop would take for years to come.

With one exception, all of the compositions on the LP were penned by Horace [among them The Preacher and Doodlin’] and Mr. Cook describes Silver’s music this way, a description that may offer a first clue as to why it is so appealing [paragraphing modified]:

“Each of them seems cut from the same cloth: rocking beats, nothing too quick but nothing that dawdled; sashaying minor melodies, voiced in clean unison by tenor and trumpet with riffing interjections from the piano; gospel and the blues seeming to soak into every eight-bar passage.

Compared to the careening tempos and linear charge of ‘true’ bebop, this music might have seemed almost too simple, a reduction rather than a development. But Silver’s group opened up possibilities in other ways.

His themes had a melodious side to them, which the slash-and-burn tactics of bop had little time for. It was listening music, but it opened the door to backbeats, a grooving motion which audiences tired of abstraction were ready to welcome.

In the new black popular music – typified by the kind of [rhythm and blues] output which Atlantic …. was making money from – bebop had no place. But [Horace’s] … blend of funky sophistications could take a seat at the table. [p.73].

The style of music didn’t have the name – “Hard Bop” – as yet, but the band had a name – 'The Jazz Messengers,' an identifiable sound, and even hung together for a while to play a number of gigs in and around New York City.

And while, The Preacher and Doodlin’ were to capture the popular fancy, my favorites on the album are the more hard-driving Room 608 and Stop Time, and the heavily blues oriented Creepin’ In and Hippy.

Frankly, after listening to the music on this album and the two subsequent live at the Café Bohemia that were recorded a year later in November, 1955, I continued to be puzzled by what is meant by the “hard” in “Hard Bop.” To my ears, the music is anything but “hard.” I always thought that the angular lines, convoluted harmonies, four-chord-changes-to-the-bar, take-no-prisoners tempi of the original bebop was a much “harder” sound than the blues and gospel inflected tunes and arrangements penned by Horace.

Or to repeat Mr. Cook’s characterization of the music: “…: rocking beats, nothing too quick but nothing that dawdled; sashaying minor melodies, voiced in clean unison by tenor and trumpet with riffing interjections from the piano; gospel and the blues seeming to soak into every eight-bar passage.” [Ibid.]

In his The History of Jazz [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997] Ted Gioia offers a perspective that is similar to that of Mr. Cook [and others] as to the key ingredients that made Hard Bop in general and Horace’s music in particular so unique, but he also goes on to identify other elements that contributed to its singularity and to its appeal [paragraphing modified]:

… ‘The Preacher’ [was] a funky blues piece infused with elements of gospel music. … The time was right for this return to the roots. Rhythm and blues and the gospel sounds of the sanctified church were starting to exert a powerful influence on American popular music. Singers as ostensibly different as Mahalia Jackson and Ray Charles were drawing on these same traditions in pursuing their sharply contrasting sacred and secular agendas.
Over the next few years, rock and roll would incorporate many of these same ingredients into a brusque, clangorous style whose impact still reverberates. The jazz idiom also benefited from a return to these first principles of African American music – at least for a time.

Eventually these funky and soulful sounds would become stale clichés in the jazz world, but for a period in the 1950’s their simpler attitudes – grooving two steps, guttural back beats, insistent melody lines drenched with blues notes- offered a healthy alternative to the more cerebral and aggressive strands of modern jazz." [p. 316]

But it when Mr. Gioia moves a bit further into his analysis of Horace’s music that the real preferences that I have for Horace’s music begin to manifest themselves. While there is the “… ‘down-home’ approach exemplified by ‘The Preacher,’ Gioia comments that Horace “refuses to be limited by it,”… and goes on [paragraphing modified]:

Silver is often described as a key exponent of this funk-inflected style, yet his major contributions reveal, in fact, a refreshing diversity. These efforts include explorations of 6/8 rhythms (“Senor Blues”), Caribbean-Latin hybrids (“Song for My father”), medium tempo jaunts (“Silver Serenade”), free-spirited romps (“Nutville”), jazz waltzes (“Pretty Eyes”) and serene ballads (“Peace”).
The one linking factors in these works is not so much Silver’s funkiness, but rather the sharp focus of his musical vision. His sound is uncluttered. His melodies are succinct and memorable. The rhythms are propulsive without being overbearing. The obsession with virtuosity, so characteristic of bebop, is almost entirely absent and never missed. "[pp. 316-317].

That’s it in a nutshell: [1] melodies that are easy to remember and which you can sing, whistle or hum; [2] propulsive rhythms that you can snap your fingers to or pat your foot to [or both]; [3] a wide variety of different “settings” in which the music takes place including Latin beats, cookers, ballads; [4] music that is fun and enjoyable and played by musicians who are excellent but don’t take themselves too seriously.

Gene Seymour in his essay entitled Hard Bop, in Bill Kirchner [ed]., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [New York: Oxford University Press, 200, pp. 373 – 388] points out that the liner notes to Horace’s Serenade to a Soul Sister [Blue Note CDP 7243 8 84277] includes “… the pianist’s guidelines to musical composition: a.) Melodic Beauty, b.) Meaningful Simplicity, c.) Harmonic beauty, d.) Rhythm, e.) Environmental, Heredity, Regional and Spiritual Influences.” [p. 382].

Seymour continues: “… others have inferred that … the fifth guideline is an elaborate definition of what came to be known as the ‘funky’ essence in Silver’s music given its suggestion of African-American strains of blues and gospel.” [p. 383].
As Horace explained to Kenny Mathieson in Cookin’: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz, 1954-65 [Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2002]: “ Funky just means earthy, coming out of the blues and gospel thing, but it’s not a style, it’s a feel, an approach to playing. The funk element came from my love for black gospel music and the blues, a combination of the two.” [p. 41].

From 1956 with the release of Six Pieces of Silver [Blue Note CDP 7 81539 2] to Serenade to a Soul Sister in 1968, Horace would release fourteen Blue Note albums all reflecting a “… combination of funky, [gospel or] folk-inflected themes with sophisticated bop….” [Mathieson, p. 41].

Recorded on November 10, 1956, Six Pieces of Silver was Horace’s first album with his permanent group – the Horace Silver Quintet [HSQ] - which in this case consisted of Donald Byrd [tp], Hank Mobley [ts], Doug Watkins [b] and Louis Hayes [d]. With the exception of the ballad, “For Heaven’s Sake,” all of the tunes on the LP are Horace’s and, as Mathieson points out:

“… several distinctive signatures were already emerging including his liking for interpolating ensemble interludes between the solos, a trait heard here in the 8-bar interjections on both ‘Cool Eyes’ … and ‘Virgo.’

In addition, his penchant for unorthodox rhythmic alterations emerges on ‘Camouflage,’ the Latin-inflected ‘Enchantment,’ and the ambitious rhythmic experiments of the album’s best known track, ‘Senor Blues’. [Ibid.]

In the album’s original liner notes, Leonard feather described ‘Senor Blues’ this way:

“Senor Blues is, for the listener at least, the most exciting of the seven performances on these sides. Set in a minor key, with the horns voiced, it is in triple time, which Horace describes as 6/8, though I would be inclined to call it 12/8. The performance is full of tricky rhythmic and counter-rhythmic effects …. Both in its solos and in its ensemble approach, this is a striking example of the degree of originality to which a twelve-bar motif can be stretched.”

Intricate sounding, yet simple in construction: the amount of though that Horace puts into the structure of his compositions is certainly a main element in why his music is appealing to me and there is so much more of this quality in the tunes on the album – Further Explorations by the Horace Silver Quintet [Blue Note CDP 7243 8 56583 2 7] with Art Farmer [tp], Clifford Jordan [ts], Teddy Kotick [b[ and Louis Hayes [d].
This is not a recording with tunes based on running the changes to Cherokee or developing thematic points-of-departure on the chords sequence in I’ve Got Rhythm.

Or, as Richard Cook phrased it in The Biography of Blue Note Records: “All but one of the tunes are Silver originals – no simple blues derivations or melodies dumped on to standard chord changes.” [p. 119].

The opening track, The Outlaw, is vintage Horace with its twists and turns containing all sorts of surprises due to its unusual structural form. Like Ecaroh, another Silver original, it employs both 4/4 straight-ahead and Latin-inflected rhythmic passages, but The Outlaw does so within an asymmetric construction that employs two sections of thirteen [13] bars divided into seven [7] measures of straight-ahead 4/4 and six [6] of Latin rhythms, a ten [10] bar 4/4 section which acts as a bridge followed by a sixteen [16] bar Latin vamp [or Latin pedal] with a two [2] break that leads into the next solo.
It’s a masterpiece whose seemingly disparate parts generate a powerful “tension and release” effect that will leave you wanting to listen to this sprightly bit of musical magic over and over again.

Another of the album’s tracks is Moon Rays which to paraphrase, Leonard Feather description in his liner notes, “ingeniously uses the horns to employ a two-part harmony with pedal-point rhythm effects on the dominant” to create a moody and haunting ballad the breaks into a straight-ahead cooker at the solos.


Pyramid is characterized by sharp rhythmic punctuations, the intermittent use of Latin beats during the channels, a “quasi-Asiatic theme” while Safari is a straight-ahead, minor bop burner taken at a wicked tempo with Louis Hayes on drums once again demonstrating that his hands and feet are so fast that they complete phrases in an extended solo before his mind can finish conceiving of them!


Melancholy Mood which is built on 7 bar sections to form an unusual 28-bar AABA and yet it plays so beautifully, is an example of Horace taking something as basic as a ballad and crafting it different and unusual fashion.

Horace’s music has so much going on that the listener can return for repeated samplings and focus on it from completely different perspectives such that something new is heard each time. It’s a veritable, movable feast.

Brian Priestley has this to say about Horace’s uniqueness in Jazz the Rough Guide: The Essential Companion to Artists and Albums [London: Rough Guides Ltd., 1995] which he authored along with Ivan Carr and Digby Fairweather: [paragraphing modified]

“His composing ability is pre-eminently a stylistic consolidator, although one less academically inclined would be hard to find. In the mid-1950’s he created the ‘hard bop’ writing style virtually single-handed, by taking for granted that even a fairly ‘mainstream’ rhythm section would be heavily bop-influenced and contrasting this with simple swing-era phrasing for the front line instruments.
This joyously conservative approach stems directly from Horace’s piano style…. Even when a tune is voiced in two-part harmony [“Ecaroh” or “Silver Serenade”], it turns out to be just the two top notes of the full two-handed piano chords.

Whether soloing or backing, Horace is first and foremost a rhythm player…; like [Art] Blakey, his accompaniment can be almost overwhelming but its flowing compulsion cushions the soloists and forces them to say what they have to say.” [p. 588].

I think that Mr. Priestley has hit upon a point that has always fascinated me about Horace’s music and this is its musical forcefulness. Perhaps the “Hard” in Horace’s bop comes from the fact that he adds a drumming quality or fluid propulsive-ness to his music.

A major contributor to the insistent swing of Horace’s music is his choice of drummer, especially Louis Hayes.

As Bob Blumenthal points out in his insert notes the CD reissue of The Stylings of Silver [Blue Note CDP 7243 5 40034]:

“In the immediate instance a special nod should go to Louis Hayes, who was roughly three weeks short of his 20th birthday when … [the album] was recorded. Hayes was a mainstay of Silver’s quintet over the first three years of its existence, and provided a fluent drive that, for this listener’s money, none of his successor’s were able to match.

A drummer cannot just close … [their] eyes and swing on a Silver chart, where accents must be precisely struck and the music may move through several variations of jazz and Latin time within an 8-bar phrase. Hayes is on top of things all the way here, which is a testament to both how much the Silver quintet worked and the drummer’s own precocious skills.”

The No Smokin’ track on Stylings is an example of the percussive qualities to which that Mr. Blumenthal is referring and they are also in evidence in a more understated way on Soulville which has some ‘big band’ kicks and fills by Louis in its bridge.

The Back Beat and Soulville [which, in addition to its other attributes, has a beautifully constructed ‘shout chorus’ played in unison by Farmer, Mobley and Silver before the group returns to the tune’s blues line] are also a perfect examples of the following characterization of Horace’s music by Martin Williams in his The Jazz Tradition [New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1993]: [paraphrased]

“Silver’s groups sometimes give the impression of a cross between a bebop quintet and a little southwestern jump-blues band of the thirties or early forties and on several pieces, Silver has in effect done some of the best big band writing of the period.”

In their chapter on Horace from Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters [New York: William Morrow-A Quill Book, 1989], Len Lyons and Don Perlo offer this [paraphrased] appraisal of Horace’s music:

“Silver is primarily self-taught [in Jazz] and studied it by playing records on a wind-up machine at a slow speed, allowing him to figure out solos and chord changes by ear. … Silver credits Monk’s playing with showing him that openness and simplicity are options ….

Silver has even simplified Monk, evolving more visceral rhythms, less sophisticated melodies, and a more traditional rendering of the blues. In short, Silver cut the complexity out of bebop, making it more lyrical and funky.” [pp.466-467].

Nowhere is Lyons and Perlo assessment of Horace’s music more in evidence than on Finger Poppin’ [Blue Note CDP 7243 8 84008] which introduced the group’s new front line of Blue Mitchell [tp] and Junior Cook [ts] along with a new bassist, Eugene Taylor.

Finger Poppin’, Juicy Lucy, Swinging’ the Samba, and most especially Cookin’ at the Continental are not lines or melodies to be played and disposed of a soon as possible, they are ingeniously constructed thematic launching pads, each with a slightly different rhythmic “feel,” that soloists what to play “in” and not just “on.”

As has already been noted, the melodies that Horace writes are trouble-free andstraightforward, but the possibilities for improvising on them are endless – their uncomplicated nature seem to help the soloist weave new melodies on top of the original line. And then there’s everything else that’s going on: background riffs, interludes between solos, countermelodies in the bass line [sometimes played in unison with Horace left-hand in bass clef].

Steve Huey notes in his review of the album for www.allaboutmusic.com “Silver always kept his harmonically sophisticated music firmly grounded in the emotional directness and effortless swing of the blues, and Finger Poppin’ is one of the greatest peaks of that approach. A big part of the reason is the chemistry between the group — it’s electrifying and tightly knit, with a palpable sense of discovery and excitement at how well the music is turning out.”

Another aspect of what I have always found engaging about Horace’s music comes from the musicians he used in his bands and Kenny Mathieson underscores this point in his review of Finger Poppin’ when he states:

“It is easy to hear even in the first outing why Silver liked the horn combination of Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook. They play his ensemble writing in disciplined fashion throughout, and also provide consistently attractive, imaginative and logically developed solos, but without ever overpowering his material, an important consideration for a musician as focused on the craft elements of composition as the pianist. While both are well capable of dealing with any technical challenges which arise in the music, neither depends on displays of overt virtuosity or emotional abandon in their playing, another quality which may well have endeared them to their leader. With a solid but responsive rhythm team picking up each nuance of Silver’s directions, this band already sounds like a well-seasoned unit, and that seemingly in-built empathy would survive the subsequent changes of drummer intact.” [Cookin’ pp. 41-42].

In August and September, 1959, the Blue Mitchell/Junior Cook version of the HSQ was to record one more album together – Blowin’ the Blues Away [Blue Note CDP 7 46526 2] which would include the formative title track that the soloists bobbing and weaving over its blues changes; Peace, one of Horace’s more beautiful ballads based around a ten bar composition and Sister Sadie, another of Horace’s gospel-inflected tunes in the manor of Juicy Lucy that cleverly evokes a blues feeling while using a 32-bar AABA form. So much thought goes into everything that Horace does on these recordings. As Mathieson comments about Sister Sadie:

“… [its] instantly catchy theme would be enough for many musicians [but] as usual, … the pianist is not content to state the theme and launch the band into a series of solos. He sounds a series of carefully thought out accompaniment figures behind Mitchell’s succinct solo and again under the first chorus of Cook’s. In the A sections of the saxophonist’s second chorus, Silver and Mitchell play a series of powerful Basie-style rifts behind Cook’s exuberant explorations. After Silver’s own two choruses, the ensemble plays a new theme on the section of the tune, and then another [related to the earlier background riff] in the next chorus, before finally returning to the original theme to close the tune. Each of these developments, while straightforward in themselves, add considerable variety and interest to a simple theme and a conventional structure.” [Ibid, p. 46].

As pointed out earlier, Horace puts so much thought into all of these charts that there seems to be a never-ending series of focal points to continue to surprise and delight the listener – happy, joyous and free – indeed!
On the subject of the albums that Horace made for Blue Note and the men who made them with him, once again, here are some insightful comments from Richard Cook, but this time in conjunction with Brian Morton as taken from The Penguin Guide to CD: Sixth Edition [London: The Penguin Group, 2002, p. 1343]:

“It’s hard to pick the best of the [Blue Note albums by the HSQ] since Silver’s consistency is unarguable: each album yields one or two themes that haunt the mind, each usually has a particularly pretty ballad, and they all lay back on a deep pile of solid riffs and workmanlike solos. Silver’s own are strong enough, but he was good at choosing sidemen who weren’t so … [full of character] that the band would overbalance: [Junior] Cook, [Blue] Mitchell, [Hank] Mobley, Art [Farmer], [Clifford] Jordan, Woody [Shaw], [Joe] Henderson, and [James] Spaulding are all typical [HSQ] horns….” [p. 1383].

Perhaps the best way to conclude this exploration into Silver’s “buried treasured” is by turning to his own words as a way of summarizing what makes his music so singular.
These excerpts are drawn from Ben Sidran’s Talking Jazz: An Oral History [New York: Da Capo Press, 1995].

“Ben: You also developed some techniques I think that are still used today, such as the way you used interludes to set up the solos and the melody and the way you used themes that really set your writing aside from a lot of the blowing dates that were going on in the ‘50s.
Horace: Well, I was trying to do something a little bit different I guess, You know, to make our band sound uncommon. ‘Cause most of the groups, they came in, they played the head and soloed and played the head on out and that was it, you know? Whereas I thought to color it up a little bit and make the whole presentation more uplifting and desirable for people to listen to. You know, with an introduction and a few little interludes here and there. Maybe a shout chorus or a tag ending or whatever, you know. Embellish upon it a little bit. Not overarrange, but you know, just something to make it a little more interesting, and more unique. More original.
Ben: The simplicity of what you were doing back then, I think, made possible. Everything, down to the last three notes of a song like “Blowin’ The Blues Away,” was definitive and simple and right on it. There no question about what you were doing or what your musical intentions were.
Horace. Well, you know, I think it takes a composer a while to learn simplicity. Some of the early things that I’ve written were too notey, you know. I wrote a lot of bebop lines in the early days that had a lot of notes to it, you know, that were difficult to play and not much space for the horns to catch their breath in between phrases and all that stuff. But as I got a little older and learned a little more, I began to realize that all that wasn’t necessary, you know. You can cut out all of those notes and it can still be great, and might even be greater, because more people can understand it. And it can still be profound, you know, and beautiful. Beautiful profound harmonies and beautiful profound simple melody … simplicity is very difficult you, know.

Now, in my opinion, you gotta be very careful with simplicity because, if you’re not careful, you can write a simple melody that can be very trite and non-meaningful, you know. But it’s most difficult to write a simple melody that is profound and deep. That is a very difficult thing to do. Find some beautiful harmonies that are not too complex, but yet beautiful, different, moving in different directions, interesting, you know, stimulating to the mind, for a player. But not too complex, so that it makes it hard to play.

And a simple melody that’s not complex to play either, but yet it’s beautiful and has some depth and some beauty and some meaning to it you, know.
Because if you’re not careful, when you’re trying to be simple, it can be very corny or trite, you know. That’s the hard part about simplicity. But once you get it, you really got something.” [pp.143-45]

Well, there you are – the reasons why I like Horace Silver’s music so much as summarized by Horace, himself. He makes it all sound so easy; would that it were.

I am also indebted to all of the authors referenced in this article for their assistance with my quest to explain why I find Horace Silver’s music so appealing and satisfying.

While preparing this piece I was reminded once again of the inherent contradiction in trying to describe music in words.

Obviously, to find what may be appealing to you in Horace’s music, all you need do is listen to it!

Horace Silver - The Ralph J. Gleason Interview [From the Archives]

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Foreword

“DID RALPH GLEASON REALLY leave us forty years ago? It certainly doesn't feel that way. Even today, you will find Gleason's name on the masthead of each issue of Rolling Stone, the magazine he helped launch back in 1967. His trademark trench coat hangs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, almost as if Gleason just stopped by a moment ago to check out the scene. The Monterey Jazz Festival, a bright idea Gleason had back in 1958, continues to thrive even as other music events and venues come and go. Every day, a music fan somewhere reads his liner notes to some classic album, whether Miles Davis's Bitches Brew or Frank Sinatra's No One Cares or Simon & Garfunkel's Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. …

Yet Ralph Gleason will always be remembered, first and foremost, as a jazz writer. Jazz was his first love and, like many early attachments, remained the most passionate. And that sense of intimate attachment comes across again and again in these pages. …

You can call him a music critic, but he might be better described as an evangelist for cutting-edge artistry and social change. He praised the greatest artists, and usually before most of the public even knew who they were. Readers looked to him for guidance whenever anything new or controversial emerged —whether Elvis Presley's rock 'n' roll or John Coltrane's modal music, Bob Dylan's protest songs or Lenny Bruce's edgy comedy routines. Gleason knew all of these individuals, and was one of the very few cultural critics of his day who was equally at home in conversation with Duke Ellington, Joan Baez, Hunter Thompson, or Miles Davis.”

- Ted Gioia

Horace Silver APRIL 16,1961

“Pianist Horace Silver did more than anyone to create the hard bop sound that came to the forefront of the jazz world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This music attracted audiences with its more soulful variant on modern jazz. Listeners could hear elements of gospel, funk, R & B, and Latin music in the work of Silver and the other leaders of the hard bop idiom. These artists never completely abandoned the experimentalism that had characterized jazz during the bebop era, but Silver & company also wanted fans to tap their toes and snap their fingers to the beat. Even as jazz lost much of its mainstream audience during the Cold War years, Silver could still attract a sizable following and generate radio airplay with his hard-grooving melodies.

Silver first came to prominence in 1950 as a member of Stan Getz's band, but a short while later he left to launch the Jazz Messengers, one of the defining hard bop bands of the period. While with this group, Silver enjoyed his first hit, "The Preacher." Alfred Lion, owner of Blue Note Records, had argued against releasing the track, but Silver insisted. "He may not have liked it," Silver later recounted in his autobiography, "but he made a lot of money from it." Silver never had another disagreement with the label over song choices, and soon other artists recording for Blue Note were imitating the Silver sound.

In 1956, Silver left the Jazz Messengers —which continued to thrive under the leadership of drummer Art Blakey—and began recording with a new quintet under his own name. Even as jazz styles evolved, with avant-garde and rock-oriented approaches capturing the attention of cutting-edge fans and critics, Silver enjoyed a string of successes, perhaps most notably his Song for My Father album (1964), which incorporated aspects of Cape Verdean music that the pianist had learned from his father. During this same period, Silver's band proved to be a Horace Silver training ground for future star jazz bandleaders, including Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, and Michael Brecker.

Silver was 32 years old at the time of his conversation with Ralph Gleason. He still had many of his best-known works ahead of him— now classic albums such as Song for My Father (1964), The Cape Verdean Blues (1965), and The ]ody Grind (1966). This interview is one of the best sources of information about Silver's priorities as a composer and bandleader during the heyday of the hard bop movement.”

RJG:  What are your own favorites of the tunes you have written?

HS: I don't know, to tell you the truth, Ralph. It's kind of a hard question to answer —I try to write a varied type of thing. I know that I'm noted by the public for writing these bluesy-type tunes I guess are the most popular, most accepted out of the things I do. "Soulville," "Home Cooking," "Juicy Lucy," "Senior Blues," "Doodlin,"' "Sister Sadie," those things, but I don't limit myself to these things, this is a part of me, a very large part of me, but there's another part of me, too, which probably the real strict Horace Silver fan would dig, but the average person that might buy my records goes for the other part of me. I'm very strongly influenced by Latin rhythms as you probably know, I dig Latin rhythms, I think they swing. The Latin music itself doesn't carry a whole lot of depth to it, harmonically and everything like that, but the rhythms are something else, you can get into all kinds of stuff with Latin rhythms. And I like to write in that vein and ballad-wise I strive to do something a little different. My ballads so far haven't seemed to have caught on too much, but I'm not giving up because I think that I'm doing something a little different as far as ballads are concerned. I'm not speaking of radically different, but I'm just speaking of originality as far as ballads are concerned. I've always thought of it in this way. As far as writing is concerned I admire Monk, and the few things, of course Bud [Powell] hasn't written as much as Monk but I mean I admire these two guys pianistically as well as their writing, but the things that Bud wrote I like very much and Monk also — naturally Duke, that goes without saying—and John Lewis also. But outside of these guys I hear so many jazz ballads that seem trite to me—and have no particular style to them and I've strived to get a different style in my ballad writing than the regular run-of-the-mill stuff, jazz ballads, and I think I've done this. Hasn't seemed to get across too much to the people, as the bluesy things I do.

RJG: Of the ballads, which one do you dig the most?

HS:   I can't say.

RJG: There was no thing that you had a particular soft spot for?

HS: Well I like "Cheryl." Of course, I wrote that for somebody that I was very fond of, and it has a sentimental thing with me. I like "Melancholy Mood." "You Happened My Way," I like that one, I like "Peace." Incidentally, Blue Mitchell just recorded "Peace" with strings. Benny Golson wrote the arrangement of it.

RJG: How did you happen to write that song? How did that come about?

HS: "Peace"? I don't know, I just sat down and tried to write a ballad and it came about—when I say I sat down, I don't have any particular idea in mind, I just tried to search for something pretty. In a ballad, it should be beautiful but also I try to search for a pretty chord pattern in most of my writing, I mean aside from the blues things I do and maybe up-tempo blues, slow blues, medium blues, or "I Got Rhythm"-type tunes, the easy blowing-type things, but I mean getting away from those things with the ballads or with maybe some of the Latin things or some other type of things that I write I try to find a different chord sequence, and interesting chord sequences. The only way I can sort of explain it is like, say you're walking down a road from one point to another like from where are we now, in Oakland?

RJG:  Berkeley.

H S: We are going from Berkeley to San Francisco — well you can take the main route and this way, straight, right over the bridge, into S.F. and then you can deviate this way and twist around that way and still come out at the same point, and that's what I try to do.

RJG: When you're writing a ballad, do you start with any phrase or idea or little run or chord changes that you happen to be thinking about at the moment, or do you just sort of start it and—?

HS: Just start from scratch. I don't have anything in mind usually-well, this is true of mostly everything I write, when I sit down to do something I have nothing in mind. The only thing I might have in mind is that I'd like to try to write a new ballad and I'll try to do this, but I have no melody in mind to start off with or no chords in mind to start off with. That's true of mostly everything I write, with a few exceptions, like, say, "Juicy Lucy," that was based on the chord changes to "Confirmation," which I like to play on those chord changes, so I just thought I'd try to write a line on those changes. I've done that on a few things, but most of the things that I write have some original set of chord changes and original melody. I don't have anything in mind when I sit down. I just stumble around until I luck up on something. Sometimes it comes all at one sitting, but most times it comes a little at a time.

RJG: I should think that the tunes that you write should then be fun for you to play too, because they would fall into your natural conception, wouldn't they?

HS:    Yeah, they are. They're easiest for me to play.

RJG: Well, they're an extension of you in a very real sense, aren't they?

HS; Yeah, I get a big kick out of writing, because a]] of those tunes that any composer, the tunes they write are sort of like having children, sort of like your kids and you listen to other people. It gives you a big thrill when somebody else records or even plays one of your tunes, the fact that they play it means that they like it, and that pleases you. Plus you get a kick out of their conception of the tune, and I'm always anxious to hear some of my tunes done by somebody else to dig what kind of conception they put to it.

RJG: Has any particular version of one of your tunes by someone else knocked you out more than another?

HS: I like George Shearing's "Senor Blues." He's doing "The Outlaw," now too, incidentally.

RJG: Oh, he is?

HS: He recorded it, too. He told me, should be out pretty soon. I'm very anxious to hear something that JJ. [Johnson] wrote. This is not my composition, but JJ. wrote a tune and recorded it with his last group before they broke up; it had Clifford Jordan, Freddie Hub-bard, and he calls the tune "In Walked Horace," and I'm dying to hear that thing. I wish Columbia would hurry up and release it

RJG: I wonder what he did. That's going to be you.

HS: Well JJ., I love everything he does, he's long been one of my, rather, I've been one of his admirers. I admired his playing and his writing for a long time.

 RJG: This is going to be "In Walked Horace" as J.J. sees it. I notice more and more musicians today perform an increasing percentage of their repertoire from their own works. Now, is this just a natural thing or is this on purpose? Does this fall logically out of what you're doing? Is it more fun to do these than to take songs and do them?

HS: Well, with me, I can only speak for myself, it really, it comes easier to me to be frank. I like standards, we do a few standards, but we do "Round About Midnight," which is Monk's thing, that's a jazz standard. We do "I'll Remember April,” and "Darn That Dream," we do a few standards, but with the standards I would like to be able to do something very, very different with them — I mean we could just blow 'em like a lot of people do, I mean, a good solo is a good solo, a good feeling is a good feeling. But I would like to arrange it in a manner that had something different about it, and a lot of times it's much easier for me to write something myself than to do this. It comes easier to me than to write an arrangement on a standard because I feel that sometimes I write an arrangement, although it might be a good arrangement, it's not that much different. So I've done a few arrangements on the standards like "My One and Only Love," I thought that came off pretty well but on the whole I find that the originals flow better with me, they come easier to me. And I feel that they have much more originality to them.

RJG: What is the thing about your own playing in the group and the whole music scene that's the most kicks to you?

HS: On the nights that we're really popping, when we really get together as a unit, really swinging, that's the most kicks. I mean this group I have now is a pretty good group, musically. On the stand and off the stand we get along well together and we have a lot of fun playing and we've been together long enough to maintain some sort of a level every night, but there are special nights when we really hit that stride, get that peak thing going where you just swing all night long and you get the dynamics right, and the level is right, the acoustics in the club are right, and the audience is with you, and that's a heck of a feeling when you get that happening.

RJG; Easier to play then?

HS; Yeah, much easier. The ideas just flow out, everything flows. It's like you're sailing in space, floating.

RJG: That's an interesting sort of free form thing that happens then, isn't it?

HS: Yeah, the tighter a rhythm section is and the tighter a whole group is, when you, 'course a group can be tight but when you really hit that stride, on those certain nights when everything is cooking, the rhythm section is cohesive, everything is smooth, the horns are really wailing and I don't know, it's hard to put into words but everything seems to flow, it's like you're sailing, floating around in space, there's not no real effort to anything. It's when the rhythm is flowing your ideas seem to flow too, just everything comes out so much easier than ordinarily.

RJG:  It's almost as if you couldn't do anything wrong?

HS:    Yeah.

RJG:  Be hard to go against it?

HS:    That's right.

RJG:   That's fascinating. Those are the real kicks?

HS:    Yeah, really.

RJG:  How often does that happen?

HS: Well that's hard to say. Doesn't happen every night, though, I'll tell you that.

RJG:  Be a groove if it did.

HS: But when you do, when that happens and everything comes off like that, it gives you a heck of a sensation, it's almost like being high. It's a natural high!

RJG:   Better than being high?

HS:    Yeah, really—because you're elated.

RJG:   Is it hard to stop then?

HS:    Stop playing or stop the groove?

RJG:   Stop playing.

HS:    No, everything just seems to come naturally, everything just flows.

RJG:   What I mean is, like all of a sudden it's 2 o'clock—?

HS: Oh yeah, well I know what you mean, sometimes you don't want to stop.

RJG:  Do you guys rehearse much?

HS: Yeah, we do quite a bit of rehearsing. We do all our rehearsing out of town, because in New York one fellow lives in Brooklyn, one lives in the Bronx, and they're all spread out, and it's hard to get together. So, whenever we go out on the road we usually stay at the same hotel and we go down to the club during the day and rehearse. We had couple of rehearsals while we were in Los Angeles and we're going to have another one this week. Because I've written some new material which, we're playing some of it now and I've got some more of it to write out this week, and we're going to rehearse it and do some of it because we're planning on a new album,

RJG: Well, now when you write out new things for the group how much is actually written?

HS; There's usually an introduction that's written out and the melody, and if there's any interludes or an out chorus and an ending, that's it. I never write down drum parts. I don't think I've ever written a drum part for any of the drummers I've had. Because, I'd rather have them just cop it from listening, comes more natural, I think writing out drum parts kind of makes things a little stiff

RJG: For instance, if you work out a tune, you take this intro and the melody and your interludes and your chorus, which is a skeleton for your final performance, and you do it in rehearsal several times, do things fall into place that you hadn't written out that are worked out in your rehearsal that you 're then going to keep?

HS: Sometimes, it depends. I usually have everything in my mind, what I want to do. I know when I write it out what I want to be happening with the tune. But sometimes when we get to the rehearsal and rehearse it, I change things around or something might happen spontaneously that I say, yeah, keep that in or throw that out or something.

RJG: Do you try to think in terms of the guys that are working with you?

HS: Yeah, I do. I try to write in terms of the guys I have with me. On the whole I do, I'll say that. To be completely honest, most times when I sit down I think of the guys that are with me and I try to write something easy for them to play, but that has depth. This is a twofold thing because it's good for them, it's easy for them to play. The chord changes are easy, but they're saying something, that's the hard part. Simplicity is very hard, you know, being simple without being corny. To write a simple melody, easy for them to play, easy chord changes for them to play, and yet have it be saying something and have some depth to it, something that's going to be a good piece of music, that's very hard and this is what I have in mind I'll say 90 percent of the time, but sometimes I get tired of that, I don't know, sometimes I just say to myself, what the heck, this one's for me, I'm just going to do whatever I feel like doing here. If it's hard to play it's just hard to play, that's all. I'm going to write it anyway.

RJG:  Who are your favorite composers?

HS: Monk is one, Duke Ellington of course, John Lewis. Bud, he hasn't written as much as these other fellows have, but I like the things Bud wrote. Let's see, J.J., I like his stuff, Miles, of course, I like Sonny Rollins tunes—well I'm sure there's some more but I can't think of them right now, those are the things that come to my mind first of all.

RJG;  How about classical composers?

HS: Well, I haven't had that much classical training, to be honest, Ralph. I like classics, but I only studied them for a very short time. I had a good classical teacher. 'Course I've gone through a series of bad teachers back home in Connecticut on piano as I did on tenor. I was taught the wrong way on both instruments and I had to undo all that wrong training and start all over again on both instruments, but when I finally got a hold of a good classical teacher I did study with him for about a year, maybe a little more than a year, and then he died and I stopped taking lessons for awhile. This teacher I had was a very excellent teacher and he did more for me than the rest of the teachers, he undid all the wrong that was taught me and he had me doing the right things. He taught me the correct fingering, the correct way to hold my hands and all that. He had me doing the Hanon exercises and the Czerny exercises which the other teachers didn't even give me, scales, minor, major, and all these different scales, he really was a good teacher, but at that time I was playing a little jazz at that time, my first jazz influence on the piano was boogie-woogie and then from there I went on into Teddy Wilson and started to listen to Tatum and then Bud and Monk and different things like that.

But I was interested in harmony at that time and I could play a few little standard tunes on the piano and I knew a few chords but I didn't know too much and what used to bug me about these classical lessons is I'd practice these things like mad and I'd get them down and, I'd have a few pages per week and finally I'd get the whole thing down well and then he'd tell me I'd have to go over it again and do the whole thing for my next lesson, and what would happen, I didn't know no harmony, and I'd get in the middle of one of these things and I'd get hung up, get lost, and I'd have to stop and go back to the beginning and start all over again whereas I realize now, if this guy had taught me harmony and I'd really known what I was playing harmonically, maybe I'd have been able to fake where I goofed off at and continue, but I didn't know any harmony. It used to bug me because I played boogie-woogie at that time, and if I messed up playing boogie-woogie I could fake my way out and keep going but when I'd get into this classical things and I'd get lost I'd have to stop and start all over again and it used to bug me and sort of took my interest away from it for a while, because I wanted to know what I was doing. 

I don't believe in being over analytical but I was kind of analytical, specially in those days because I learned more from phonograph records, I think, than anything else because back in Connecticut, I'm from Norwalk, very few jazz musicians around there and maybe one or two good ones at that, and the record shops hardly carried any good jazz records, I had to go into New York to pick up some records and when I'd go into New York to pick up some records I'd be so thrilled to get these records, I'd go to maybe 10 record shops and buy one record from each place, whatever I could find and I thought I could learn from, I'd bring these things home and I'd put them on the little old-fashioned wind-up phonograph, slow them down and I'd figure out the chords from the record, and I'd try to analyze these things, where the piano player played. I'd listen to it and hear it and try to find it on the piano. Then I'd try to break it down and I said, now, what is this he played, let me analyze this, what do they call this chord, and I learned a lot like that.

RJG: Well, sure, with the blues thing, if you got hung up in the middle of the boogie-woogie thing you know the pattern on which it was based, you could go and do any darn thing and come out alright.

HS:    That's right.

RJG: How are your hands, have you had any more trouble with your hands?

HS: No, my hands have been doing very well, thanks to my doctor, I have a wonderful doctor. He's a chiropractic doctor and a physiotherapist, and I have a lot of faith in chiropractic doctors, specially this one anyway, a lot of people put him down, but this doctor's a very wonderful doctor and aside from being my doctor he's my friend too. He's from New Haven, Connecticut. His name is Dr. Dwight Hamilton. He's about 71 years old and he was born on the same day I was and we're both Virgos, September 2nd's our birthday, and he's a friend of mine as well as my doctor. I've learned a lot from him about health. I've become very health-conscious through him and reading health literature and I had this, they thought it was arthritis at first, in my right hand, but it turned out to be a thing called tendonitis. It's a sprained tendon and I had an overacid condition which was keeping it from getting well. I had about three times as much acid in my system than I was supposed to have and he got rid of that for me, and it took about eight months of treatments, little by little, to get rid of the thing, but I'm completely straight with it now, my hand is fine and I try to keep this acid thing down. But I have nothing but praise for him. He's a very wonderful person and for a man of his age a very studious man. I admire him so much, because I look at him at his age, he's so agile. He looks like he's about 49, and he's 71. Climbs the stairs two at a time. Rides downtown on his bike every morning for the paper and all of that and he's one doctor that's really interested in his patients, which most doctors today are not. They don't take an interest really, but he takes time with you and he's always studying something, he studies hypnosis, he studies graphoanalysis. He's a heck of a guy, a very interesting guy.

RjG: What things do you have now in your mind that you want to do in the next few years, what challenges are you setting yourself?

HS: I'll tell you, the things that I have record-wise, we have to do two albums a year, record-wise, what I have planned for this year is the things that we're rehearsing now. I've planned for a live date in a club in New York, I don't know which club, but some club in New York, we're going to record a live session, and secondly, a trio album which I haven't done in quite a few years, that's what I have planned for this year. And after that, maybe something with a big band or semi-big band or strings, I don't know exactly, something maybe a little different. Also I have something else in my mind for this year. I have been thinking in terms of trying to reach more people, a bigger audience with my music. I've been asking the booking agency to try to get us jobs in places that we haven't been before. We have no trouble playing all the major cities and all of that, but I'd like to get to some of these places that we've never played before. I mean foreign countries, we've been abroad, but there are some of the countries we haven't played before. Some of the smaller cities that we haven't played before, like Kansas City, we've never been, I think we're going to go there, and Milwaukee, Minneapolis, little places like that. Even if it means taking a little less money, I'd like to get to some of these places and present my music to a wider audience.

RJG: Well, you got a lot to experiment with there. If you want to get around to those smaller places. Because most of them don't get jazz groups,

HS: That's true. Rochester, New York, that's one, they have a club up there now. 'Fact, I think Jon Hendricks' brother is part owner in the club.

RJG:  Jimmy?

HS:    Yeah.

RJG:  Well, crazy, I look forward to hearing the trio album.

HS: Well, it's my continual aim to try to improve my playing and my writing. I stay pretty busy, especially in New York because I never realized before I became a leader what work is involved in it. A lot of people probably don't realize, certainly the side men don't realize because it's a heck of a lot of responsibility. Aside from trying to keep up my instrument and trying to do the writing, arranging, there's so much business details to be taken care of, you have to get your contracts in the office and publicity and all kinds of things, taxes, and it never stops. I'm always running around, never having enough time to complete anything. When I get back to New York now, I'll have been away for about three and a half weeks, and my mailbox will be bulging with stuff to attend to.”

Conversations in Jazz: The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews is available directly from Yale University Press and you can locate order information by going here.